Pitch Session Signups Open!

Pitch sessions at StokerCon 2017 are an excellent way to get your work in front of industry professionals. 15 minute sessions will be scheduled between 2 pm – 5 pm in the Queen’s Salon Saturday April 29, 2017. There is no additional charge to participate.

To sign up, review the list and send your top 5 choices to Brian Matthews at gonnhirr3382@gmail.com with the subject heading “StokerCon 2017 Pitches” Please include your first and last name. We’ll be taking signups from 3/6 – 3/17.

Pitch sessions are limited to 3 per person. Please list 5. We will make every effort to accommodate you, but we expect slots to go quickly. Please add any time slot preferences you may have in your email.

Cutting Block Books

Patrick Beltran of Cutting Block Books is looking for completed novels featuring well-crafted supernatural horror. At this moment, he wants traditional, literary-type horror novels (think Joe Hill, or King, Koontz, William Peter Blatty). Nothing too extreme or too graphic: no torture porn, splatterpunk, erotica, etc. Just good old fashioned supernatural horror featuring interesting characters and situations, and stories with a definite beginning, middle, and end.Cutting Block Books is dedicated to publishing the best in artistic, well-crafted, and commercially viable horror fiction. We believe in the primacy of story — a good book always starts with a good story — and our readers deserve nothing less than consistently excellent literary entertainment.In broad terms, we like engaging characters, compelling situations, plots that feel fresh, and stories that sizzle with authenticity and resonate with the deepest longings of the human spirit. Those factors, in our opinion, form the foundation of a good story and a good book, regardless of genre. Those are the ideals we pursue.

Lonetree Entertainment

Tony Eldridge develops and produces feature films and television shows. His Lonetree Entertainment production company controls or manages the film rights to over 50 literary properties including books by New York Times bestselling authors David Fisher, F. Paul Wilson, Jonathan Maberry, Heather Graham, Raymond Benson, K.J. Howe and Ron Rapoport, as well as original screenplays and true life stories. He has developed projects at Sony, Paramount, HBO, Warner, Columbia, Universal, TF1, Studio Canal, eOne, NBC, and ABC.

Tony most recently produced the hit Denzel Washington movie The Equalizer at Sony Pictures and is in pre-production on the sequel, Equalizer 2. He is currently producing The War Magician feature film starring Benedict Cumberbatch for Studio Canal, based on the life of Jasper Maskelyne, a charismatic stage magician who used illusion on a grand scale to trick Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps and, in so doing, changed the course of WWII and history. Other high profile projects include Patient Number One and Mars One with Zucker Productions, Animal for Iconoclast Entertainment, China Diaries with Cherokee Productions and The Vixens for TF1.

Cherry Weiner Literary Agency

Cherry Weiner grew up in Australia, lived in Europe for three and a half years, and moved to America when she married her husband, Jack. She has been agenting since 1977, when she was fired by her boss, the well-known Robert P. Mills.

For the next two years, Mills’s more famous clients (she won’t drop any names but might tell you about it, if you ask her) persuaded Cherry to open her own agency by inundating her with new authors and their manuscripts.

She started out handling science fiction, fantasy, and horror. She now handles all adult fiction genres, including a number of fairly well-known authors in the field of Horror, Romance, Mystery, Westerns, Native American novels, and Historical novels covering all the various genres. Rarely a nonfiction work has crept into the mix, but please: no poetry or no children’s fiction. When it comes to the Young Adult genre, she handles works in science fiction, fantasy, or horror, and only by the authors she already represents in adult fiction. Unless you are already represented by Cherry, please do not pitch a Young Adult work.

01Publishing

01Publishing specializes in horror, science fiction, and fantasy stories that are not “safe,” that push limits and challenge their readers to think and question. Our favorite question to ask is “what stories do you want to tell that other publishers won’t touch?”

Kat Rocha will be taking pitches for the following:Novel / Novella Proposal:Provide a one page plot synopses of your story and a proposal of how many pages/books will be necessary to finish it. One book novels/novellas are preferred but feel free to propose a multiple book series. If we are interested we will ask that you email to us one of the following: your completed manuscript, or an outline of all the major plot points from beginning to end and the first 7000 words.

Graphic Novels:Provide a one page plot synopses of your story, a proposal of how many pages/books will be necessary to finish (one book graphic novels are preferred but feel free to propose multiple book series), a full story outline, and 5-10 pages of the completed book . We want to see what the art will look like, as art is vital to the storytelling.

Blumhouse Productions

Rebekah McKendry is the editor-in-chief for Blumhouse Productions, as well a co-host of the Shock Waves podcast. Previously, she worked as the Director of Marketing at Fangoria Entertainment for over a decade. She has a Ph.D. focused in Media Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University. Additionally, she is an award winning horror filmmaker with a number of festival accolades over the past several years.

Rebekah is looking for articles for the Blumhouse.com website. We buy upwards of 20 articles a week, so she is always looking for writers! Blumhouse Productions also makes horror shorts, so she would also love to hear some story pitches for those as well.

Omnium Gatherum

Omnium Gatherum publishes dark fantasy, weird fiction, and horror in print and eBook formats. We are dedicated to artistic excellence and the exploration of fresh ideas and unique perspectives. In the 6 years the press has been in operation, several titles have been nominated for awards. This year Greg Chapman’s Hollow House and Gene O’Neil’s Lethal Birds are shortlisted for a Bram Stoker Award®.

Kate Jonez, chief editor at OG, is looking for novels (50k words or more) novellas (17,500 – 50k words) and especially series (novels or novellas). Omnium Gatherum publishes stories that twist the conventions of horror, fantasy, or weird fiction in new and interesting ways. Stories with settings other than the US and UK, characters not often featured in fantasy/horror/weird fiction, and supernatural beings other than werewolves, vampires and zombies have the best chance of acceptance. If your story is too quirky, odd, or disturbing to share with the folks at your day job, Omnium Gatherum might be the publisher for you. Adult fiction with a strong voice and sense of place is preferred. YA of interest to adult readers may be considered. http://omniumgatherumbook.com

Johnny Worthen is an editor at OG and a sucker for thematic writing. In the realm of dark fiction and horror, he is always impressed by stories that involve a personal journey, a rite of passage, the bandages from old wounds. Unless there’s a good reason to place the story somewhere else, he prefers contemporary settings. Johnny is not a fan of splatter. Unless there is a strong thematic reason for it, he would rather not get his boots wet. Also, he is not a fan of children endangerment unless, again, there is a strong thematic reason to do it. Rape ain’t good either, unless… yeah, you get the picture.

Gamut

Gamut is an online magazine of neo-noir, speculative fiction with a literary bent. Gamut wants to support the voices that are not getting enough recognition, and we pay a great rate (at ten cents a word, we are twice the going professional rate). We want to surround ourselves with authors and artists that inspire us. We need more markets will to publish edgy fiction that straddles the line between genre and literary fiction. Gamut accepts stories 500 to 2,000 words (flash fiction) and 2,001 to 5,000 words (short fiction).

Mercedes M. Yardley, an editor at Gamut, is looking for: stories that enchant, characters we can cheer for, and tales that feature ghosts or other paranormal entities.She wants to see beauty in the madness. Less revenge stories, violence for violence’s sake, and preaching. Gamut is not your pulpit.

Cohesion Press

Lee Murray is an editor at Australia’s Cohesion Press. Cohesion Press is seeking military action horror and creature-based speculative fiction. The press publishes short and long fiction, novels and graphic novels. Their authors include Jonathan Maberry, Hank Schwaeble, Patrick Freivald, Weston Osche, and Greig Beck, among others.

Cemetery Dance Ebooks

Norman Prentiss is the Editor, Electronic Books Division for Cemetery Dance Publications. He is the author of Odd Adventures with Your Other Father (A Kindle Scout Selection), the Bram Stoker Award winning novella Invisible Fences, and an ongoing flash fiction blog entitled “Excerpts from the Apocalypse-a-Day Desk Calendar.”

Pitch Parameters: Considering works for Cemetery Dance’s eBook line. Looking for horror and dark suspense works, novella length and up, and will also consider short story collections.